Here at RE Technology, we're huge advocates of anything that saves time for real estate agents. After all, saving time is one of the key benefits of real estate technology! If a tool is creating work for you, you need to take a hard look at the cost-benefit analysis. Today, I'm going to focus on just one timesaving tool, auto-populating forms, and the pitfalls you should be aware of in order to be successful with them.

The Plus Side

State real estate associations and the National Association of REALTORS® have worked with legislators to create forms that protect all the parties to a transaction. This is a huge leap from the days when real estate agents had to lawyer every document for every transaction. But forms are just the beginning. Modern technology has taken it a step further with the ability to auto-populate these forms.

Depending on the complexity of a transaction, the total number of pages of documents can exceed 300. Some forms providers have replaced "dumb forms" with "smart forms." To clarify, dumb forms require you to enter the buyer's name every single time it is required – which is often as many as 20 forms in a transaction. Smart fields, however, allow you to enter the information just once and it populates everywhere else in the documents that that information is required.